TOPICS FOR “ANIMAL FARM” ESSAY EXAMPLE

EXAMPLE OF LITERARY ANALYSIS OF “ANIMAL FARM” BY GEORGE ORWELL

The satire story-parable “Animal Farm” was released in February 1944. George Orwell deliberately wrote it in plain and intelligible language, so that translators (especially Russians) could easily convey its true meaning to anyone, even the most obscure reader.

The book consisting of ten chapters represents a classical anti-utopia based on real historical events that took place in Russia from 1917 to 1944. The work is revealed by the speech of the old prize boar Old Major (prototype – Lenin), calling on animals (workers and peasants) to fight humanity (the ruling class). The second chapter tells about underground struggle, the natural rebellion of hungry animals against Mr. Jones (prototype – Nicholas II) and the transformation of the “Lord’s court” (Russian Empire) into the “Animal Court” (USSR). In the third part of the work, the author is drawn to the shock work of the new state, the fourth shows the attitude of the neighboring farms (countries) – England, USA and Germany to the new farm. The fifth chapter of the story tells about the fleeing from the “Animal Court” of the intelligentsia in the face of the loving piece of sugar and the multicolored ribbons of Molly’s horses, developed by the Lobal (prototype – Leo Trotsky) windmill (NEP – the new economic policy of the USSR, which came into 20th years of the XX century) and the displacement of a smart and enterprising boar by Napoleon (prototype – Joseph Stalin) at first sight.

In the sixth part of the work, Orwell illustrates the hard work of animals, the emergence in society of the need for objects produced outside the farm (foreign imports), the establishment of a new trade policy with Napoleon. At this stage of the historical development of the farm (the USSR), the pig is transferred to the master’s home (contrary to the seven commandments, which they slowly begin to rewrite) and begin to seek the internal enemy becomes a sabotage of the fled Dogs of Napoleon (Soviet power structures Collapse).

In the seventh part of the “Animal farm” there is a restoration of a windmill (a symbolic image that goes back to the tradition of Cervantes), a hunger strikes the farm, followed by demonstrative executions by the supporters of the Crash. The eighth chapter tells about the cult of personality of Napoleon (Stalin) under a windmill (Great Patriotic War). In the ninth part, animals come to realize the burdens of their livelier lives, in the tenth – Orwell gives a picture of both the present and the future of England (the prototype is Europe), in which human farms take an animal, and the inhabitants of the latter come to the conclusion that the pigs leading them do not differ from people (enemies-capitalists).

The internal political confrontation between people (the rich) and animals (the poor) ends with the formation of a new, perfect society based on the principles of equality. Bundling inside the wildlife takes place gradually, but its beginnings are already visible in the very first acts of pigs (putting them on the leading positions during general meetings, the selection of milk and apples from animals). The arrival of Napoleon’s power is drawn as natural (the inhabitants of the farm are accustomed to his leadership), and as power (supported by nine ferocious dogs). The shimmering political slogans symbolize the illiterate population of the farm (USSR), which runs on the occasion of power. The consolidation of Napoleon’s government’s position takes place through lies and deception: the seven commandments written on the wall of the barn are constantly changing, gaining a new, necessary leader, meaning; everything that happens on the farm is turned over. The history of the “Animal farm” ends with the establishment of friendly relations with people and the complete assimilation of the pigs that begin to walk on two legs at first, then wear human clothes and look like snares on human faces.

The artistic images of the protagonists have either specific historical (Nicholas II, Stalin, Trotsky, Molotov), ​​or generalized prototypes. A worker-horse symbolizes the working class, seeing the only opportunity to improve its life through everyday work. The more difficult the situation is at the farm, the more the horses fit into the work. A horse feels holy to comrade Napoleon, doubting from time to time, but always at the same time goes to the construction of a windmill, spending on it both his own work and personal time.

The long-suffering chickens forced to give their eggs for sale (so that Napoleon could replenish the chests of the farmer’s hunger for money) and who periodically perish either from internal rebellions, or from treason against themselves (several birds are executed) are a symbolic image of the Soviet peasantry.

The dissident stratum of society is an old donkey Benjamin-most often silent but periodically opening the eyes of the animal to the actions of power (for example, when the wagon carries a live-animal out of the farm). It is this hero who best understands the essence of what is happening in the “Animal farm”: “They never lived better or worse – hunger, overwork and deceived expectations – the inviolable law of life.”

The clergy in Orwell’s story were embodied in the artistic image of Mr. Jones favorite – the cavalry of Moses (another speaker’s name pointing to the Biblical basis of the character). The reader encounters this hero twice: before the rebellion of animals (the time of the Russian Empire and the flowering of Orthodoxy) and after the Battle of the windmill (a partial revival of Orthodoxy after the end of the Great Patriotic War).

The “Animal farm” final can be called a prophetic: Orwell, without knowing it himself, precipitated the gradual formation of the USSR on the path of capitalism (the union of pigs with Mr. Calmington) and the return of his former name (the Russian Federation instead of the disappeared Russian Empire).

ANIMAL FARM ESSAY EXAMPLE

The story “Animal farm” was written in 1943, and was published in 1945. The work of George Orwell refused to print in England and America (it clearly traced satire to Stalinism).

Once in the village, George Orwell saw a guy who was driving on the horse’s path, striking him with a rod every time he tried to turn it to the side. “One thought came to me,” he recalled, “that if animals realize their power, we can not rule over them, and that people exploit animals just like the rich exploit the proletariat.” In the picture of rural life, the maximalist and idealist George Orwell saw a sharp satire on “barracks communism,” Stalinism. In his work, he, without hiding behind metaphors, talks about the new lies that he tries to capture the world and the Man, about the lies disguised as magnificent truth.

Animals, aware of their own strength and the fact that they are mercilessly exploited, throw out the owner from the farm and begin a new life – free and fair. Every day they feel like something changes. They can not even say what, as if yesterday there were seven commandments of a new life on the wall, and today it has become six. However, was it really, or just seemed to be for a simple worker – the horse Boxer? Is it true that the slogan “Animals should not drink alcohol with excess” once sounded shorter? Who knows. When freed from human bondage, naive and simple animals fall into the yoke even more dangerously, painfully and incomprehensibly, because this is their yoke over their own. When the soldier destroys strangers in the war, this can still be understood. And how to justify a system in which a person destroys and betrays a yesterday friend? And not for the sake of a high purpose, but a bag of rotten apples or milk buckets. The seventh commandment, “All animals are equal,” gradually and imperceptibly takes on meaning: “All animals are equal, but some animals are superior to others.”

For the satire of the unfair modernity, the writer’s despair appears. He did not like imperialism, he was opposed to fascism, against which he stood. The writer understood the hypocrisy of the “left”; his hopes, aspiring to the East, also crashed into reality. Still, the pathos of the “Animal farm” inspires awareness of immortality, because humanity will never give up the struggle for justice and happiness. And one who attempts to usurp the right to uncontrolled leadership, “monopoly truth”, will be associated with pigs from Orwell’s fairy tale.

In this work, there are many questions – direct and rhetorical. The answers to them, which seem to hide behind allegorical images, are simple and understandable. Everybody knows these answers, but not everyone can admit it. Why the animals created on the farm idyllic system, when “everyone on the farm gave everything that could” and “no one stole, did not argue for the superfluous piece, and the controversy, fights and mutual envy, customary in the old days, almost disappeared”, suffered collapse? Why do pigs, which the author calls the most intelligent on the farm, start cruel tyranny against pigs like them? Why Napoleon, cherished the coup, selects the best representatives of swine youth and begins to engage in their education? And why is it not terrible to describe the cruel massacre of young piglets allegedly “enemies of the people” and the supporters the main enemy of the dictator of Napoleon, who “were killed immediately on the spot” (although the farm did not kill even the rats after the expulsion of the owner), and from the terrible metamorphosis of the sixth commandment, which originally said: “No animal shall kill any other animal”, and then it was reformulated: “Animals should not kill other animals without cause”? Obviously, because the reason can always be found.

The “Animal farm” offers answers to these questions. This book can hardly be named allegorical, although formally the main one used in it is the allegory. It is so transparent and unequivocal that it does not give grounds for classifying the work to the genre of fairy tales, because it represents the terrible truth of the present, reveals the deep essence of a person who tries to escape under the mask of charity and honesty.

George Orwell, in this work, emphasizes that there is something animal in human nature. However, there is also a human nature in it – what makes a person a Man even on the last face of the highest despair and heavy pain, when death seems to be the desired happiness in comparison with life. A person becomes a pig as a result of his own choice.

EXAMPLE OF SHORT ANALYTICAL ESSAY OF “ANIMAL FARM” BY GEORGE ORWELL

“Animal farm” is a novel-parable of the English writer J. Orwell. Observations of political events of the beginning of the 20th century resulted from the author’s metaphorical history of society in the conditions of totalitarianism. The phenomenon of how the very best intentions and progressive ideas of humanity can be distorted and used to the detriment of it, is especially bright and precise.

The novel tells about a farm, the owner of which was really cruel with animals: practically did not feed, forced to work too much, beat them with a whip. The theme of the work is the development of animals and their life on the farm after they become free of the owner. Under this symbolic mask, the history of the development of the USSR after the revolution of 1917, the coup in the name of universal equality and justice before the establishment of a rigid dictatorship of state power over all spheres of social life, in which no real speech and equality of people could have been, could be concealed.

The main idea of ​​the work is that the alienation of power from people in society leads to the fact that it ceases to serve people, and begins to govern them, in this case, continuing to cover up lies and loud slogans.

Immediately the plot twists from the moment when an old-fashioned boar proposed animals to arrange a revolution on the farm, to overthrow the owner and his workers. After the Chief’s death, the animals drove people out of the farm. The farm was renamed. The animals began to work directly on themselves, after which they proclaimed seven commandments that acted on its territory:

Whatever goes after two legs is an enemy.

Whatever goes on four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

No animal should wear clothes.

No animal should sleep in bed.

No animal should drink alcohol.

No animal should kill any other animal.

All animals are equal.

So, the role of the leaders among the animals was taken by the pigs. They ruled together, there was a large number of conflicts and disputes, at the same time the animals remembered this time as the happiest one for themselves. But, like all the good, this board of two pigs is over. Napoleon, taking advantage of the help of the dogs whom he raised, drove out of the collapse Farm. It should be noted that gradually all the commandments first change, and then at all canceled, there is only one – the seventh.

Novel “Animal farm” is a parody of events that took place in 1917 in Russia. Many characters are the figures of the world leaders who ruled in those years, as well as some sections of the population. In fact, “Animal farm” can be considered a caricature of the revolution in Russia and the subsequent years of communist rule. In the novel, there is a large number of hyperbole and exaggeration, which is characteristic of works that resemble the structure of the parable. Initially, the action in the novel looks bright, and closer to the end of the atmosphere is depressed. And the ending is just sad.